Tea mugs

Can you guess what is consumed most by humans all around the globe after air and water? Tea! Did you know that green tea and black tea come from the same plant just like green mangos and ripe ones? Yesterday I woke up early, the seroma was better, and I had the morning free, so after several false starts, I got myself out the door for a run. Ok, a jog. Ok, something that is supposed to be a jog but is hardly any faster than a walk. But I’m proud to say I kept up this lowly pace for two miles, aching all the way, and then walked another two after that, and returned stiff and sore, but I’m on my way back to normal. (Sort of.) What kept me going for that hour of misery was a BBC history podcast called “In Our Time” (with very cool accents) about tea. And what caught my attention about tea was how it was adopted and then adapted by Brits so that now it is the national hot drink, but drinking tea in Britain doesn’t look like drinking tea in China, where it came from. Brits don’t have the same tea ceremonies, or those fancy little bowls. No, you could catch a Brit chugging it unceremoniously from a mug. And Brits add milk and sugar. An entirely different flavor. The leaves are the same in both places, the essence of the thing, but the customs around drinking it change from culture to culture.

I thought about this as I got ready for the day but was interrupted when I glanced in the mirror.  Usually I avoid doing this because I haven’t gotten used to that alien, Grima Wormtongue look. But this time I was surprised to see two dark smudges above my eyes where my eyebrows used to be. Looks like I was trying to stop a headache by pinching those pressure points there and had charcoal on my fingers. The eyebrows are making a come-back! And I definitely have white peach fuzz growing on my head. Don’t know what the radiation will do, but I’m glad to have something finally going on up there. I went back to thinking about tea rituals as I struggled to keep awake after all that rigorous exercise but fell asleep on the couch. I was glad when a visitor came to pull me out of my lethargy, and I told her about the tea. 

Tea is important in my house because Robert drinks it first thing and last thing of the day with coffee in between. He even carries tea bags with him when he travels, and my kitchen has more tea-making paraphernalia than any other kind of paraphernalia, which rather supports that opening statistic.  I prefer coffee (though it’s verboten for me with tachycardia. I tried decaf on the Zocalo the other day because everyone else was having one, and it smelled so good…bad idea). It’s an American habit ever since we thumbed our nose at the British with the whole Boston Tea Party thing.

Culture changes so much about how we do things. Most of the world drinks tea, but it would probably not have become this popular if everyone had to drink tea the way Chinese drink tea, if they had had to import all the ceremonies and accouterments.

Missions is like that. We want Jesus to be loved everywhere. But He won’t be if we insist on importing the accouterments—the bowls and rituals—like having people worship in a language they hardly speak. Better to figure out the essentials and not sweat the rest. Better to run a few 20 minute miles than none at all. 

mugs Elai and Mikael gave us